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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jay Verkuilen" data-source="post: 7758485" data-attributes="member: 6873517">So, you don't much care for having Perception checks when there's possible surprise? Or do you demand to say "Nattick starts swimming for the bank against the current" when dumped into a fast river before being asked to make an Athletics check? I tend to default to the notion that the PCs are actively looking/doing unless it's fairly obvious they aren't, so I'll call for check when there's potentially something to be seen or done that they might see or do. My players know this and react accordingly. If they would clearly notice or do something, I'll just say that.However, if the DM is calling for checks constantly to do anything, that is definitely annoying at minimum. I feel this is much more of a mature DMing style for me. I'v played a lot of improvisational music and using chance is frequently done to push a player out of ruts. For instance, taking a lead sheet and marking out parts where the player should rest or play can be very helpful. Another would be to determine a metronome speed and/or time signature randomly and then try to establish a groove at that tempo. There are other examples, such as drawing cards with a few descriptive words and then having to figure out a scene in improv. Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt even made "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblique_Strategies" target="_blank">oblique strategies</a>" to help break out of ruts. I don't think I'm using it as a crutch (in the way reading the boxed text is), I'm using it to help prod me to think of things I wouldn't have otherwise or as a way to prod the players to look in surprising directions or to help fill in the world. A successful check can be fun, but a failed one can also build tension if used right, and, as I said, it can help push a particular character out of their strength, which is also useful. It's one reason I like some light personality mechanics that involve rolls (although I haven't implemented any in 5E). I am often unsure how a character should react. A check helps push me in a direction, sometimes not in the one I'd have preferred or thought of. IMO that helps make the world feel much less on rails and more organic. For example, in my planes-hopping game, the PCs had met some galeb duhr as a random encounter on their way to deal with some rogue Modrons, which was a planned encounter. This led to some negotiation. It turned out the galeb duhr had a Hammer of Thunderbolts which they were willing to trade for a large sum of gems (galeb duhr really like gems). The PCs didn't have any at the time. The fact that they had an item of power was something determined by a roll that the PC wizard noticed---I can't recall if the player asked for that or not. I hadn't decided that but rolled the treasure and, rather than rejecting it, thought WTF... it sounds fun and wasn't what I'd planned but, cool. Well when they went back to try to cut a deal with the galeb duhr, it turned out they were in the middle of a fight with a horde of minotaurs, who had got the help of a goristro demon! This was also the result of a random encounter, though interpreted through the lens of the campaign. The fact that the galeb duhr had had conflict with minotaurs had already been established (minotaurs also really like gems... we're all a bunch of Heroes III nuts here), and it's not crazy something big showed up for the Hammer of Thunderbolts first. So, what started as a random encounter has escalated into a fairly big fight!I'm not a slave to the dice, though: If the story is going a particular way, I don't usually roll to see what's happening outside of the usual mechanics of the rules.</blockquote>

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